


Home

by findingkairos



Series: to you I gift the end of things [3]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Finding Peace, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Techno retires to a singleplayer world instead of the SMP arctic, Technoblade Gets a Hug (Dream SMP), Technoblade Needs a Hug (Dream SMP), Technoblade Retires, Technoblade-centric (Dream SMP), Video Game Mechanics, Winged Philza Minecraft (Dream SMP), Winged Technoblade (Dream SMP), Worldbuilding, aetwt, happy endings, sentient minecraft world servers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 06:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findingkairos/pseuds/findingkairos
Summary: Technoblade has made the advancement[Home]He retires to the one place where he cannot be disturbed. He finds peace. He finds adventure.  He messages Phil sometimes, actually plays through the Minecraft Advancements, reaches the End, and rests at Home.
Relationships: Technoblade & Philza Minecraft (Dream SMP)
Series: to you I gift the end of things [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104326
Comments: 62
Kudos: 780
Collections: Completed stories I've read, Nine Billion Names





	Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HorribleTimes_MiserablePleasures](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorribleTimes_MiserablePleasures/gifts), [HelloDarknessMyOldFriend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloDarknessMyOldFriend/gifts).



> ( _what are you looking for?_ — a place where I am unafraid)

Sometimes peace cannot be earned. It must be made, in the quiet things, the small things, with your own two hands.

Every Player knows how to make a singleplayer world. Not many do it, because there’s always more stuff to do in the shared servers. Their friends are there; they can find fame and fortune there. It’s a certain kind of person who chooses the lonesome life.

**Generate Structures:**  
> ON

**World Type:**  
> Default

**Seed for the World Generator:** **  
** > _

Here, he hesitates. He has heard of seeds before, watched Phil cradle them in cupped hands and listened to him whisper about how the World Generator will take those wishes and run with them if given half the chance. He has never made a world using a seed before.

But he’d never wanted to keep those worlds, either, and this time he wants something a little more permanent than a place to rest his head between tournaments on Hypixel and wars on faction servers.

He runs fingers through the trails of light and thinks about seeds. _What do you want?_ He can practically hear Phil saying. _Water-based? Lots of mountains? A woodland mansion?_

He thinks about the last true animal companion he’d had. He thinks about the last place he could truly take off his armor—not just for cleaning, not just for washing up, but because he’d wanted to. Because he could without getting immediately back-stabbed for it.

“Somewhere with a lot of snow,” he thinks out loud, and watches the numbers glitch and shatter and then—settle.

**Seed for the World Generator:** **  
** > 1372204

Well then. He checks the other options for a moment—they’re nothing he can’t change later while in-world, and since he’s going to be the Player who’d _created_ it, he’ll have access to powers that he’s never had before. If he’s honest to himself, he’s looking forward to it—not for the power trip, although that does soothe the ringing in his ears that demands he be best in whatever he deigns to invest his time in.

But it’ll be a chance to see what he can do when he has blocks in hand, not weapons.

The last thing he needs to set before he can make the plunge, he almost doesn’t change from default. New World is an apt name, after all, even though the more poetic version of it would be something like New Horizons.

But he doesn’t want this to just be a new world. What would be the point of that, when he can just join any fledgling server or multiplayer world that’s just getting started? No, he wants this one to be different. If he’s honest with himself, he wants this one to be if not the last, then the one he comes back to, every time. He wants this to be the place that he’s heard Phil talk about in fond and heartsick tones.

And there’s only one name for a place like that.

**World Name:**  
> Home

**Create New World?**  
> YES

* * *

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Minecraft]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Stone Age]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Getting an Upgrade]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Acquire Hardware]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Adventure]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Husbandry]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Monster Hunter]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[A Seedy Place]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Sweet Dreams]**

* * *

He realizes at the end of the first week: this is _his_ world. His Home. If he wanted, he could go to the End and finally see what the hype is all about.

He’s heard the legends, of course. There’s a victory dance tradition on Hypixel that takes inspiration from the ender dragon. There’s references to it in art and in history books, whether they’re Player-made or otherwise. He’s killed a mimicry of it once or twice, on servers and on other worlds.

But never in a singleplayer world. He wonders: is it different somehow? Is it better? Surely not more difficult, especially since the world is in Survival, not Hardcore. He’ll have to change the game mode to Easy instead of Peaceful, but that’s easy enough to do.

It’s food for thought, while he takes his time crafting his armor and coaxing his new wheat crops to grow.

* * *

Check mail?  
> YES

You have: 12,309 messages from off-world users.  
> DELETE ALL

You have: 0 messages from off-world users.

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
Hey, Techno. I hope this message finds you well. 

Continue reading?  
> YES

* * *

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Suit Up]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Isn’t It Iron Pick]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Diamonds!]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Cover Me With Diamonds]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[What a Deal!]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Take Aim]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Voluntary Exile]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Ol’ Betsy]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Who’s the Pillager Now?]**

Technoblade has completed the challenge **[Hero of the Village]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Best Friends Forever]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Fishy Business]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Bee Our Guest]**

* * *

His crops grow, even in this snowy tundra that reminds him of familiar places. He starts trading with the villagers he’d saved in the raid, and he goes home with the wolf he’d tamed on his heels.

But there’s a plains right next door, and he hasn’t forgotten the trustworthy companion that had stuck with him through thick and thin for months in a Survival multiplayer server. It won’t be the same, but—maybe. Maybe.

* * *

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
Without a fishing rod? Mate, you’re gonna need a bucket for that one. Don’t forget to be careful, especially if it’s a pufferfish.

Continue reading?  
> YES

* * *

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Tactical Fishing]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Ice Bucket Challenge]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Enchanter]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[We Need to Go Deeper]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Nether]**

Technoblade has completed the challenge **[Return to Sender]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Those Were the Days]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[War Pigs]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Oh Shiny]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Hidden in the Depths]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[A Terrible Fortress]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Into Fire]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Spooky Scary Skeleton]**

* * *

He goes into the Nether almost by habit. Diamond armor is necessary to not get one-shot killed by something in a world he’s set to Easy, but it’s been a long time since the discovery of Netherite and he’s worn armor made of that particular ore for so long that he feels uneasy without a set.

Sometimes his fingers hover over the ephemeral lights, wondering why he’s doing this; he’d come here for peace, not to fight another war nor to prepare like he is. But it’s different this time. This is something for _himself_ , in a way that the others hadn’t been. He’s going into the Nether and exploring a fortress because _he_ wants to. He’s mining for Netherite because it’s only part of the point, because this time he’s taking the time to stop and wonder at all the forests made of warped and crimson trees.

Because this is his world, and he wants to know every nook and cranny of it. Because this is Home, and he wants to be comfortable when he’s Home, wherever he goes.

He does find diamond horse armor there for his horse, though, which is nice. Now nothing can come and threaten it, even if all that’s fatal these days is a too-ambitious jump or an unlucky strike from a pillager. Some might call it overkill on a world that houses only him, but better safe than sorry.

He feeds Carl Junior and does his best not to trip over Floof the wolf dancing through his knees, and wonders what else there is to do.

* * *

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Local Brewery]**

Technoblade has completed the challenge **[A Furious Cocktail]**

Sometimes he does things just for fun, just to see what happens. It’s a heady feeling to realize that he _can_. That he has the resources to, but moreover, that he has the _time_ to.

He has time, now. He has all the time in the world.

But there’s one thing that he’s still curious about—and for that, he needs to prepare information and materials both.

* * *

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
I think you should go for it. The End is pretty cool, and the first time any Player makes it in singleplayer is—well, I won’t spoil it for you. But if not for that, then at least go for the elytra. I think you’d enjoy flying.

Continue reading?  
> YES

And, well, Phil has a point. The guy has wings, the mark of an advancement that any Player strives towards and that only few have the patience to reach. It’s a certain kind of person who chooses the lonesome life, and a particular kind of person who succeeds enough that the gods—or whatever force in the universe it is that grants elytras—take notice.

The fact that he’s been going to bed underneath the stars, wondering what it’d be like to fly high enough to touch the clouds, is just a bonus.

* * *

Technoblade has completed the challenge **[Cover Me in Debris]**

Technoblade has reached the goal **[Hired Help]**

Technoblade has completed the challenge **[Sniper Duel]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Eye Spy]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[The End?]**

Technoblade has made the advancement **[The End]**

* * *

He has the time of his life. The dragon is clever, the Endermen are plenty, and the End has an electric feeling to it that he can’t quite describe. It feels like being before the World Generator again, he thinks. The shadow of limitless potential, with the added zing of a dragon who’s pissed that he’s encroaching on its territory.

Too bad for it; he’s eager to move on with this and explore just what this dimension holds. Phil had been frustratingly sparse on the details, insisting that the End—and what comes after—is something that needs to be experienced for himself.

He kills the dragon; of course he does. No matter how long it’s been, no matter how many sunrises he admires on this peaceful little world that is Home, he is no more or less lethally capable. The world acknowledges it with a brief message that hovers in the corner of his eye:

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Free the End]**

It shimmers away, leaving the rest of the End in silence. If there are any Endermen left, they’re not in sight. He stands before the dragon’s fountain, eyes the dark glimmering Egg that it’d so jealously guarded. He’s heard rumors about this, too. It’s not required in any way, shape, or form, but it’s a definite bragging right. A nice paperweight, too, or maybe something to keep in an item frame.

Technoblade has reached the goal **[The Next Generation]**

Afterwards, he checks the End Cities before leaving per Phil’s advice. It’s possible to return to the End once he’s back in the Overworld, but why waste a trip when he can just manage it now?

Technoblade has made the advancement **[The City at the End of the Game]**

He blocks out to the far islands and runs into far too many Shulkers. They’re not too bad a mob to fight—the actual damage is annoying, but the Levitation status effect is hilarious. He lets some of them hit him for funsies, and ends up hovering high enough that the world sends him another message:

Technoblade has completed the challenge **[Great View From Up Here]**

That one makes him snort-laugh, the ugly kind he’d never indulged except when in one place—and Home, now, but the Levitation is wearing off and he needs to find a place to cling to before he falls.

Thankfully enough, he finds a ledge. Even better, he finds what he’s come all the way out here to find.

Technoblade has reached the goal **[Sky’s the Limit]**

He has to take off his Netherite chest piece to put them on, but when he does—it feels good. It feels _right_.

He can still take them off, too, which lines up at least with what he knows of Phil’s wings: optionally permanent, optionally temporary. A final little bit of magic from whatever supernatural force it is that runs the universe.

He decides to take the elytra for a run once he’s back in the Overworld. There’s no water here to mitigate his fall damage if he lands wrong, and he remembers what it’d been like, all those years ago, learning how to use a sword or an axe or a crossbow for the first time. Newbies are never graceful, and he doesn’t want to have come all this way only to bite it by literally biting into bedrock or Endstone.

There are convenient gateways scattered through the city for that, at least, and one of them takes him back to where he wants to go.

Technoblade has made the advancement **[Remote Getaway]**

And, finally, here at the End: there is one last portal. It’s where he’d carefully excavated the dragon egg from, and where the dragon itself had been guarding. Phil had been clear about this part, at least—he’s not supposed to try and find a way back through the portal he’d come in from.

These doors are one-way, he thinks to himself with no little amusement, and doesn’t hesitate to jump in.

* * *

What comes after the End is—well.

Now he understands why Phil had been so dodgy about answering his questions. There’s a certain magic to it, a certain _something_ that makes him reluctant to talk about it in his messages back afterwards.

But he knows one thing for sure: he’d been meant to overhear that conversation. And whatever it is that’s watching over the universe is watching over him, too.

* * *

The elytra, when he chooses to wear them, become an actual pair of wings—not just the hang-glider-like thing they had been when he’d first picked them up, not the weird facsimile that had been on his back before he’d dove into the final portal that bridges the End and the Overworld. They’re feathered when he wants them to be, scaled when he wonders if he can change that, as big or as small and as dark or as light or as vibrantly multi-colored as whatever his imagination can make up.

It’s a final bit of magic, of unexplainable delight that the universe has given back to him, and he’s not even mad about having to give up his chestpiece for them.

He learns how to fly over the glacial sea that borders his arctic home, and the clouds are colder than he ever could have imagined. The stars are closer, too, and one night on a whim he snaps a picture and sends it to Phil.

He gets a message back almost immediately.

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
Mate, that’s beautiful. You should send pictures of your sunrises or sunsets, too—they’re some of the most unique things about the worlds. Have you tried to see where yours ends, yet?

Continue reading?  
> YES

* * *

There’s a reason most singleplayer worlds are _kept_ singleplayer. Worlds aren’t meant to be converted between one and the other, because the force that keeps them running is either tied down to a singular Player or to a larger array for those that support more.

And he—well. There’s a reason he’d been so popular in all the tournament-hub servers, in all the Survival multiplayer servers he’s ever been in. He puts in the work for his skills, whether that’s combat or crafting or blacksmithing. He works for his reputation. His wins, duels or tournaments, are clean. No one has ever accused him of cheating and had the accusation stick, because as everyone knows: Technoblade never dies.

But there’s also that little something extra that always seems to follow him, that turns the tide in his favor when he really, really needs it.

He asks with all his heart, and Home says: _For you, of course_.

The world shivers minutely. The electric feeling from the End is back again. The hairs rise on the back of his neck, but all he feels is warmth.

Your game mode has been updated to Survival (Multiplayer) Mode, the world says, and he smiles and sends off the message.

* * *

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
Of course I’ll come over. Just send over the World Coordinates, and I’ll be right there. No need for you to return. Things are a little heated here.

If Phil is calling things _heated_ , then things have gotten out of hand. He trusts the guy, true, but there’s no reason to chance disaster when he can just show up.

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
Are you sure? Not that I doubt you, mate, but you don’t have to. I can find my own way there—you’re not the only one who knows how to traverse worlds!

You have: 1 priority message from a user on your Best Friend List.  
> OPEN PREVIEW

**To:** Technoblade  
**From:** Ph1LzA  
Fine, if you insist. Where did you last leave? I’ll head there so that we can pop over as soon as you get here. That’s probably safest.

* * *

Technoblade has joined the game

He finds Phil where he’d said he would be. That’s a good thing, since there are like four guys, all in Netherite armor, looking up at the world message and then going for their weapons on reflex.

“I’m ready,” Phil says. He looks—rough. His hat’s askew, his hair’s a mess, and the wings on his back are shuffling and reshuffling, uneasy, apprehensive.

“Then let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he says, and simultaneously, before the angry citizens of a government can form a mob, they do.

Ph1LzA has left the game

Technoblade has left the game

* * *

“Welcome,” he says, to a Phil who leans in and brushes shoulders with him, to a Phil who runs soft fingers over his new wings in love and not malice, to a Phil who slumps now that he no longer has to stand up straight and keep up appearances.

Phil smiles as he looks around, breathes in, exhales steam here in the arctic that had reminded him of home. He wonders, almost idly, if Phil finds it nostalgic, too.

But he’s made more memories here than he’d ever had in the Antarctic, and with Phil here—he’s going to make even better ones. He’s sure of it.

“What is it called?” Phil asks.

The world whispers and the hairs rise on the back of his neck and it’s alive, it’s a companion who delights in giving, in his curiosity and exploration and wonder.

“Home,” he says, and spreads his wings. “Wanna check out the sunset? I promise you it’s great.”

**Author's Note:**

> That World Seed is [an actual Minecraft seed](https://www.pwrdown.com/gaming/best-minecraft-snow-winter-seeds/%22), spawning you in a plains biome right next to a snowy tundra with a nearby village.
> 
> If you can, you should definitely play through Minecraft (killing the ender dragon and traveling through the End fountain). What comes after, and the credits, is definitely one of my favorite game things of all time.
> 
> I wrote this in one sitting, filled with love and adoration for a game that, at its core, encourages creativity and exploration. I hope some of that vibe managed to make it through to you.
> 
> Most of my recent work can be found at my [root pseud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/findingkairos).
> 
> * * *
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta)
> 
> **This author sees and appreciates all comments but may not reply due to exhaustion and anxiety.**
> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason (sometimes I feel shy when I’m reading and not up to starting a conversation, for example), feel free to sign your comment with “-whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


End file.
